I don't even get a chance to say thank you before the call ends, and I find myself staring at my email, waiting for the references.
She's going to need them.
44
Amber
“You're sure?” He asks me as I sit on the edge of the counter, my legs crossed at the ankle. I'm cold, but I know that won't last long. I didn't want to overdress. I just wore the most simplistic dress, one designed to come easily off of me when he decides he's ready.
I nod slowly, not trusting myself to speak. I'm not scared, but I'm not as numb as I'm trying to make him believe.
Before I woke up here, I felt like I was swathed in static, insulated... not to protect me from the world, but to protect my brain from the reality. I lived walking through life like I was in a daze, a horrible nightmare I couldn't even have the proper reactions for. I feel things now that I don't know how to contend with... things that I want to put an end to.
“I belong to you.” I tell him honestly. I don't tell him that my heart belongs to him. It won't make a difference in how our story ends. I know that. Two killers absolutely can't have a happily ever after. We'd hurt each other, probably over and over again. And who's to say we wouldn't one day end up killing one another? “Let me be your little doll again.”
He looks like he wants to argue, his lips pressed together. But it doesn't fight back the frown pulling ever so slightly at the corners of his mouth.
“You aren't just my little doll anymore.” He tells me, pressing his forehead to mine.
A shiver runs down my spine as his warm fingers stroke my cheek, making my eyes flutter closed as I try to hold onto this feeling of being cherished. He's so good at pretending, so good at making me feel worthy when we'retogether.
But every time he leaves me, the doubts creep in, the venom floods the good things, and all the happiness I think I've found vanishes. He can't have that much control over me that he makes me feel right when we're together and then broken, shattered, and turned to dust when we're not.
The high isn't worth the crippling low, because there's no future in which we can continue to live indefinitely in our bubble. And I can't even explain all of this to him, because it doesn't make sense to me. How can I make him understand what I don't?
“I love you. I will love you, whether you're aware of it or not. I will love you when my heart stops or when yours does. And part of me thinks that as weird as it sounds, this love is too potent to die when we do... that it will last even after.”
They're beautiful words, but I don't believe there's anything after this. I wavered for months between life and death... it's where he's going to send me back to. And in that space, there was nothing but me... the memories of what happened to me without the fear or pain, the awareness that something still was happening to me. When it comes for me, I think death will be like that. Only instead of those memories, everything will just end.
But he looks so hopeful; I don't want to ruin it.
“Maybe in another life, it could have been.”
“I'll find you sooner in the next one.” He assures me, his thumb stroking over my lip.
As if realizing what he's doing, his eyes turn to my mouth, and then he uses the leverage of his hand on my face to bring my mouth to his.
His kiss is the sweetest thing I've ever known. It's all pleasure, all promise, all paradise. It's why I asked him to kiss me one last time before I go.
My chest heaves with breaths I can't control as he kisses me harder, and my lips grow wet. I think it's from his tongue, at first, that he's simply ravenous, turned on by what we're doing. But then I realize it's not just my lips that are wet... it's my cheeks, my chest. I start to pull away from him to see the tears that fall from his eyes, and to ask him why he's this distraught about it.
I don't pull away, though, because he kisses me harder while he cries, one hand tangled in my hair and the other moving to my neck.
I barely feel the pinch of the needle when his teeth sink into my lip and I taste copper.
He sucks my lip between his as the world around us falls away, my entire world tunneling down to our single point of contact, his lips on mine.
The pleasure seeps away, the image of him with tears on his cheeks fades, and then all that exists is my final conscious breath... one that we share until everything disappears.
45
Cal
I don't have long now.
But I can't let go of her yet. I don't want to do anything. I told her I'd let her fall asleep naturally and then hook her up to everything after.
I told her I'd keep her the way I had her before, that I'd do everything just the way we already have.
